Some embodiments described herein relate generally to managing a control plane of a switch fabric, and, in particular, to methods and apparatus for designating and causing instantiation of distributed switch control plane engines as virtual machines.
Some known switch fabrics implement a control plane separately from a data plane. In such know switch fabrics, services associated with the control plane and services associated with the data plane are typically implemented at different physical devices. Such switch fabrics, however, typically do not instantiate services as virtual machines. Thus, distribution of the services is limited within the physical devices of the control plane and the data plane.
Some other known switch fabrics instantiate servers, applications and functions as virtual machines to overcome the limitation of physical devices. Such known switch fabrics, however, typically apply the virtualization approach within the data plane, but not within the control plane.
Accordingly, a need exists for virtualizing control plane engines for a control plane that is separate from a data plane in a switch fabric.